The Story of Us - End Notes
by WENN9366
Summary: When Enos graduated from the Police Academy and took a job as Deputy of Hazzard County, the Dukes were still running moonshine, Rosco was just a fellow deputy, and J.D. Hogg was buying up the town piece by piece. This sequel to The Story of Us follows his life from age 19 to the beginning of the series.


_A/N: To everyone who has followed The Story of Us, a deep and profound thank you from the bottom of my heart. _

_If you haven't read The Story of Us, it is the back-story for the rest of my fanfictions, including **Halls of Stone and Iron**, which I am currently working on. Throughout the series, we see hints of the history between Enos Strate and the Duke family - and from what little canon we know, it has always been a close relationship. We know that Enos grew up as the son of a moonshiner, who ran whiskey alongside Jesse Duke and his family. The Story of Us is about this relationship and how a boy who grew up in the hills with a family tradition of boot-legging became a Hazzard County Deputy. It strives to understand the relationship between Daisy and Enos - but it is not a romance - it is perhaps more of a tragedy, exploring how the bonds of friendship can by time and misunderstanding dissolve and skew into the two people we know from the series. __ It is not a comedy by any means. _The fanfiction ends where the series picks up.  


_This was originally chapter 16 of "The Story of Us", but it begins a new part in Enos' life so I decided to transfer it into a sequel that I could finish at a later date. Plus, I really thought Chapter 15 of TSOU wrapped everything up as far as the relationship between Daisy and Enos goes. _

_There isn't much left to write here in this sequel, but I do still want to explain how Rosco became Sheriff and what happened between Amy and Enos someday. (The reviews for this chapter have been transferred to this story).  
_

* * *

March, 1972

Birds twittered, fluttering about in the bright sunlight of the chilly March morning as a warm breeze blew from the field across the road, swaying the limbs with their newly formed buds in its ebb and flow. The day was alive with life, welcoming the coming of Spring after the long, harsh winter of 1971.

Yet, with life came death of a kind that bore bitterly into the hearts of even the roughest Hazzard County had to offer. A slip of fate – tragic and senseless, the fact of which made the consequences only harder to accept.

Her eyes sought his where he stood, caught them, and held them a moment before he looked away, back to the bier and its oak coffin and the green, plastic carpet concealing a shallow, dark shaft in the New Friendship Cemetery. He was dressed in the uniform of Hazzard's finest, and she recalled how full her heart had been the first time she had seen him wearing it, and of the proud gleam in his eyes as Sheriff Harris had sworn him in as a deputy.

Had she thought it was a game? Playing police officer - as she, Luke, and himself had done so many times growing up. Revenuers and moonshiners...

If she'd ever held such an illusion, it had come shattering down two days ago in a rain of a thousand tiny shards – burying themselves deep into her heart, and she doubted if she would ever be able to dig them out completely.

_It should have been him. _

A tightness began in her chest at the thought, but she'd promised herself she wouldn't cry again. It was wrong, she felt, to weep over what had _not_ happened instead of what had.

It had been a typical Friday evening, with the boot-leggers gearing up for their runs...in fast cars, loaded with high-proof whiskey.

The CB on the kitchen counter had been tuned to Channel 9 that day, Uncle Jesse wanting to get a feel for where the Sheriff had stationed his deputies before his run up to Johnson Ctiy - a game of cat and mouse that the Dukes had played for so long it hardly bore thinking about.

She had listened absently as she'd made dinner, but mostly it had been chatter, procedural codes for this and that, locations of the three patrol cars; Rosco, in Hazzard #2, Travis in Hazzard #3, and Enos in Hazzard #4. Travis Ecklund was in his second year with the Sheriff's Department, hailing from Acworth, Georgia, a small town just north of Atlanta. His father was a rail-road man which, though more legal than a ridge-runner, was just about as poor. He and Enos had become fast friends.

The sun was dipping low on the horizon, bathing the quiet farmyard in warm tones of gold and orange, when Rosco had put out a call for someone to chase down a '66 Comet speeding west on Ridge Road, himself already busy with another traffic stop.

"_10-4, Hazzard 2,"_ came Enos' reply, _"ETA five minutes."_

There was a few seconds of static and then, _"Enos, I'm right here on Ridge an' Possum Lick, I'll get him."_

"_10-4, Hazzard 3. Don't let him out-fox ya', Travis."_

"_I was born behind a wheel, Strate,"_ Travis had laughed. _"See ya' at th' station."_

"_10-4, Ecklund. Hazzard 4 out."_

Twelve minutes later, Enos came over the radio once more, worry evident in his voice. "_Hazzard 3, please copy."_

...Silence.

"_Hazzard 3, Travis, I just heard a mighty big explosion from over your way. You alright, buddy?"_

...Silence.

"_Hazzard 2, 10-25 Hazzard 3?"_

"_I ain't heard from him, either, Enos._"

"_I'm right here at Ridge so I'll check on him. Maybe his radio ain't workin' again."_

"_10-4 Enos, Rosco out."_

They said you could see the flames ten miles away as darkness fell - burning like the gates of Hell up on that ridge. A rock slide had stopped the Comet dead in its tracks, just around a blind corner with Hazzard #3 tight on its tail. There were no skid marks. Travis had never seen it coming.

Her eyes drank him in as though he were a mirage that might fade away into nothing. If he'd taken the call, _he _would be the one in that coffin, and..._and._...

She lowered her head to conceal the tears rolling down her cheeks, falling like drops of rain on the memorial card in her hands..

* * *

He glanced back up as she looked down, across the quiet stretch of earth between them. Her shoulders hitched slightly, betraying her sorrow. He watched her – loving her more than the sun, moon, and stars above, and his throat tightened as he thought of where she _should_ be - a bittersweet memory, sleeping still and silent beneath the trees whose only season was a season of death.

Two days after coming back to Hazzard, he'd picked up the paper from the breakfast table to read the Funny pages when the front page story had stopped him cold. It had taken his breath away and damn near made him grab her and shake her until she repeated the promise she'd made to him the night she'd come home wasted.

No one in his life had ever been given a second chance, but the Good Lord had brought her back to the farm, safe and sound.

He'd gotten up and gone over to where she was cooking, passing the paper to her without a word. Slowly, the color drained from her cheeks, and she'd reached out, grasping his shoulder to steady herself before stumbling past him and out the kitchen door.

The dead, he'd supposed, affected everyone differently – and discovering you should by all rights be numbered among them was a painful blessing under the best of circumstances. He'd found her around the side of the house, retching, the paper on the ground beside her.

She'd turned, her tears an unending river of sorrow and disbelief - but his own that fell later, in the quiet of his room, were those of thanksgiving mingled with guilt. She'd come back to him at the farm that night instead of staying at that party, while 28 drunken teenagers burned to death in a shack on the banks of Moccasin Creek.

The blaze had spread like wildfire the paper said, fueled by high-proof moonshine. There had been no survivors...


End file.
